Kroger Field to receive $7 million upgrade for new lights, ribbon boards

The home of Kentucky football is getting a few upgrades ahead of the 2024 season. New lights and ribbon boards are coming to Kroger Field this fall.

According to the Herald-Leader, $7 million in private funds will be spent to upgrade the ribbon boards and lighting system at Kroger Field. The matter was approved by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2022 and is expected to be rubberstamped by the school’s Board of Trustees this Friday.

The first installation of ribbon boards happened back in 2011 ahead of Joker Phillips’ first season. It was somewhat controversial at the time, covering the Ring of Honor that highlighted the program’s best players. In the almost 15 years since, technology has improved drastically, dating the current ribbon boards and making them difficult to repair.

As for the lighting system, the report from Jon Hale does not detail specifics. But let me answer this rhetorical question: if you’re upgrading lights in 2024, are you going to put in regular lights, or are you putting in the cool LED lights?

It would be silly if Kentucky did not crank up its in-game atmosphere by investing in the lights that can be turned on and off throughout the game. This blogger remembers Georgia starting the popular college football trend with red LED lights. South Carolina put on one hell of a show last fall. Now it looks like Kentucky will have a blue light show coming to Kroger Field in 2024.

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The Kentucky football program has received infrastructural upgrades over each of the last three seasons. Kroger Field received new video boards ahead of the 2022 season. Last year the school invested $5 million to make Nutter Field House a facility used exclusively for football. The Cats also got a brand new playing surface at Kroger Field.

The latest upgrades should please most fans, but there are still a couple of things that need to be addressed. The sound system is older, leaving it inconsistent throughout the stadium, and there is no Wi-Fi access for Kentucky football fans.

“There’s certain amenities, obviously the Wi-Fi piece is something that hangs out there. A distributed sound system for Kroger Field is something we’d like to do,” athletics director Mitch Barnhart told KSR last summer.

“They’re both highly expensive items and there are some other things we’ve got to do in our program. Those things are on the docket, in our thought processes, but there are also some things we got to attack in other areas before we get to that.”